World in Between by Kenan Trebincevic

Author:Kenan Trebincevic
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780358440932
Publisher: HMH Books
Published: 2021-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

July–October 1993

“Are we going to stay in Vienna until we can go home?” I ask my brother.

“We don’t have a home anymore, kid,” he says.

“Then where will we go?” I’m frustrated that after six months in Vienna, we’re still in limbo. School is finished for the year, and our time in this apartment is about to run out—it’s been rented for July, so we have two weeks to find a new place to live.

Eldin just shrugs.

We can’t go back to living with Uncle Ahmet. I fear we’ll be forced into the crowded refugee camp. Worse, I’m afraid we’ll be sent back to Bosnia while the war is still raging. Dad says we could be deported if we don’t keep applying for updated short-term visas every three months. And from Eldin’s radio, we hear the war is getting worse. Even if it ends, he says, we could be sent back to a hostile land with no home to return to.

We’ve gone from being a well-liked, successful family to beggars praying for somebody to take us in. It feels beyond humiliating to be poor and homeless, dependent on people we barely know for a roof over our heads. Whenever someone looks like they feel sorry for us, I want to shout, My mother’s really an office manager at a fancy clothing company, and Dad’s the owner of the best gym in town!

Mom still thinks we should go to the refugee camp, to be with Sejo and Edita and their kids. But a week before we have to move out, Mrs. Rath asks us to meet with her son-in-law, a guy named Siegfried. He’s a businessman in his thirties, with pale blue eyes, red hair, and red eyelashes. He takes us to a pastry shop, where I get an apple turnover and juice.

“My wife, Theres, is a nurse. We have two little kids, and we work all day,” Siegfried says as we all sit together at a little table. “Would you consider moving into our spare room in exchange for babysitting? For as long as you can? You’d be doing us a favor.”

My parents agree. He seems nice, and he pays for my pastry, so I’m in.

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